Aim 6 - Growth ............................................................................................................................................................ 22

Key focus within this Aim for 2021-22

6.6 Ensure that all leaders and members of staff in individual schools have opportunities to ssociate positively with the Trust

“Growth is a lot more sophisticated than simply acquiring schools.”

Ian McNeilly, Chief Executive

Safeguarding

We don’t have a discrete strategic aim for safeguarding because we prefer to see it as running through everything we do.

1.9 Ensure that pupils are safe and feel so in order to support their development and progress.

During the last academic year, the Covid pandemic produced some significant challenges in the way we were able to safeguard children. The most obvious of these were the extended periods of time when the children were not in our schools, in our care, in our sight, and not having that contact meant much abuse may have gone unreported, unrecognised, and unaddressed. Despite this, when children did return we did not see a rise in cases of abuse and this may be down to the excellent contact all our schools kept with vulnerable families.